CULTURE,BEAUTYETC. 







W.C.Rives. 






VEST-POCKET bJilLT 



Siantmrir aitir poplar ^xtiljors. 




HE great popularity of the " Little Classics " 
has proved anew the truth of Dr. Johnson's 
remark : " Books that you may carry to the 
fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most use- 
ful after all." The attractive character of their con- 
tents has been very strongly commended to public 
favor by the convenient size of the volumes. These 
were not too large to be carried to the fire or held 
readily in the hand, and consequently they have been 
in great request wherever they have become known. 

The Vest-Pocket Series will consist of volumes 
yet smaller than the "Little Classics," — so small that 
they can indeed be carried in a vest-pocket of proper 
dimensions. Their Lillputian size, legible type, and 
flexible cloth binding adapt them admirably for the 
beguiling (or improving) of short journeys ; and the 



high excellence of their contents makes them desirable 
always and everywhere. The series will include the 
I choicest productions of such authors as 

EMERSON, LOWELL, 

LONGFELLOW, HOLMES, 

WH1TTIER, HOWELLS, 

HAWTHORNE, HARTE, 

and others of like fame. 

They will be beautifully printed, and bound in flex- 
! ible cloth covers, at a uniform price of 

FIFTY CENTS EACH. 



The first issues will be as follows : — 

SNOW-BOUND. By John Gkeenleaf Whittier. 
Illustrated. 

EVANGELINE. By Henry Wadsworth I 
fellow. Illustrated. 

POWER, WEALTH, ILLUSIONS. Essays by 
Ralph Waldo Emers- 

CULTURE, BEHAVIOR, BEAUTY. Essays by 
Ralph Waldo Emek 



JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

Publishers, Boston. 



Cultusre, BeTicuvior, 
Becuxty. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



BOSTON : 
JAMES It. OSGOOD \\D COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor &■ Fields, and Fields, Osgood, <£- Co. 
1876. 



PSUL 



Copyright, i860, by 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



GIFT 

William c 



ESTATE c 



* Pfi "-, T940 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 

Cambridge. 



c^^^y, 



CONTENTS. 

Page 
CULTURE 5 

BEHAVIOR 45 

BEAUTY 79 



^S5Y£&* 



CULTURE. 



CAW rules or tutors educate 
The semigod whom we await? 
He must be musical, 
Tremulous, impressional, 
Aluc to gentle inilucnce 
Of landscape and of sky, 
And tender to the spirit-touch 
Of man's or maiden's eye 

But, to his native centre fast, 

Shall into Future fuse the Past, 

Aud the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast, 



CULTURE 



l^^f HE word of am hit ion at the present day 
) is Culture. Whilst all the world is in 
pursuit of power, and of wealth as a 
means of power, culture corrects the theory of 
success. A man is the prisoner of his power. 
A topical memory makes him an almanac; a 
talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get 
money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. 
Culture reduces these inflammations by invok- 
ing the aid of other powers againsl the domi- 
nant talent, and by appealing to the rank of 
powers. It watches success. For perform- 
ance, Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the 
performer to gel it done ; makes a dropsy or 
a tympany of him. If she wants a thumb, 
she makes one at the cost of arms and le<?s, 
and any excess of power in one part is usually 



8 CULTURE. 

paid for at once "by some defect in a contigu- 
ous part. 

Our efficiency depends so much on our con- 
centration, thai Nature usually, in the instances 
where a marked man is sent into the world, 
overloads him with bias, sacrificing bis sym- 
metry to his working power. It is said, no 
man can write but one book; and it' a man 
have a defect, it is apl to leave its impression 
on all his performances. If she creates a po- 
liceman like f'ouche, he is made up of suspi- 
cions and of plots to circumvent them. "The 
air," said Fouche, " is full of poniards." The 
physician Sanctorius spent his life in a pair of 
scales, weighing his food. Lord Coke valued 
Chaucer highly, because the Canon Yeman's 
Tale illustrates the statute Hen. V. Chap. 4, 
against alchemy. I saw a man who believed 
the principal mischiefs in the English state 
were derived from the devotion to musical 
concerts. A freemason, not long since, set 
oat to explain to this country, that the prin- 
cipal cause of tie- success of General Wash- 
ington was, the aid lie derived from the free- 
masons. 

But worse than the harping on one string, 
Nature has secured individualism, by giving 



CULTURE. 9 

the private person a high conceil of his weight 
in the system. The pest of society is egotists. 
There-are dull and bright, sacred and profane, 
coarse and fine egotists. 'T is a disease that, 
like influenza, hills on all constitutions. In 
the distemper known to physicians as chorea, 
the patienl sometimes turns round, and con- 
tinues to spin slowly on one spot, [s egotism 
a metaphysical varioloid of this malady? The 
man runs round a ring formed by his own 
talent, tails into an admiration of it, and 
relation to the world. It is a tendency in all 
minds. One of its annoying forms is a crav- 
ing for sympathy. The sufferers parade their 
miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, re- 
veal their indictable crimes, that you may 
pity them. They like sickness, because phys- 
ical pain will extort some show of interest 
from the hv-standers. as we have seen children, 
who, finding themselves of mi account when 
grown people come in, will cough till they 
choke, to draw attention. 

This distemper is the scourge of talent, — 
of artists, inventors, and philosophers. Emi- 
nent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of 
putting their act or word aloof from them, 
and seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. 



10 CULTURE. 

Beware of the man who says, " T am on the 
eve of a revelation." It is speedily punished, 
inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor 
it. ami by treating the patient tenderly, to 
shut him up in a narrower selfisnij and ex- 
clude him from the greal world of God's 
cheerful fallible men and women. Let us 
rather be insulted whilst we are insultable. 
Religious literature has eminent examples, 
and if we run over our private list of poets, 
critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we 
shall find them infected w it h this drops) and 
elephantiasis, which we ought tp have tapped. 

This goitre of egotism is so frequent among 

notable persons, that we must infer some strong 
necessity in nature which it subserves; such 
as we see in the sexual attraction. The pres- 
et at ion of the species was a point of such 
necessity, that Nature has secured it at all 
hazards by immensely overloading the passion, 
at the risk of perpetual crime mid disorder. 
S egotism has its root in the cardinal neces- 
sity by which each individual persists to be 
what he is. 

This individuality is not only not inconsist- 
ent with culture, but is the basis of it. Every 
valuabb nature is there in its own right, and 



CULTURE. 11 

the student we speak to must have a mother- 
wit invincible by his culture, which uses all 
books, arts, facilities, and elegances of inter- 
course, but is never subdued and lost in them. 

He only is a well-made man who has a good 
determination. And the end of culture is not 
to destroy this, (iod forbid ! but to train away 
all impediment and mixture, and leave nothing 
but pure power. Our student must have a 
style and determination, and be a master in 
his own specialty. But, having this, he must 
put it behind him. He must have a catho- 
licity, a power to see with a free and disengaged 
look every object. Yet is this private interest 
and self so overcharged, that, if a man seeks 
a companion who can look at objects for their 
own sake, and without affection or sell'-refer- 
ence, he will find the fewest who will give 
him that satisfaction; whilst most men are 
afflicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, as 
soon as any object does u..t connect with their 

self-love. Though llic\ talk of the object be- 
fore them, they arc thinking of themselves, and 
their vanity is laying little traps for your ad- 
miration. 

But after a man has discovered that there 
are limits to the interest which his private 



12 CULTURE. 

history has for mankind, he still converses 
with his family, or a few companions, — per- 
haps with half a dozen personalities thai are 
famous in his neighborhood. In Boston, tli3 
question of life is the names of some eighi or 
ten men. Eave von seen Mr. Allston, Doc- 
tor Channing, Mr. Adams. Mr. Webster, Mr. 
Greenough? Have you beard Everett, Garri- 
son, Father Taylor, Theodore Parker? Have 
you talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Sum- 
mitlevcl, and Lacofrup si - r Then you may as 
well die. lu New York, the question is of 
some other eight, or ten, or twenty. Have 
you seen a few lawyers, merchants, and bro- 
kers, — two or three scholars, two or three 
capitalists, i vro or three editors of newspap 
New York is a sucked orange. All com 
tion is at an end, when we have discharged 
ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or 
imported, which make up our American ex- 
istence. Nor do we expect anybody to be 
other than a taint copy of these heroes. 

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or 
company of intelligent men together again 
after ten years, and if the presence of some 
penetrating and calming genius could dispose 
them to frankness, what a confession of in- 



CULTURE. 13 

sanities would come up! The "causes" to 
which we have sacrificed, Tariff or Democracy, 
Whigism or Abolition, Temperance or Social- 
ism, would show like roots of bitterness and 
dragons of wrath: and our talents arc as 
mischievous as if each had been seized upon 
by some bird of prey, which had whisked him 
away from fortune, from truth, from the dear 
society of the poets, some zeal, some bias, and 
only when he was 'now gray and nerveless, 
was it relaxing its claws, and he awaking to 
sober perceptions. 

Culture is the suggestion from certain best 
thoughts, that a man lias a range of affinities, 
through which he can modulate the violence 
of any master-tones that have a droning pre- 
ponderance in his scale, and succor him against 
himself. Culture redresses his balance, puts 
him among his equals and superiors, revives 
the delicious sens.' of sympathy, and warns 
him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. 

"T is not a compliment, but a disparagement 
to consull a man only on horses, or on steam, 
or on theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, 
whenever he appears, considerately to turn 
the conversation to the bantling he is known 
to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our tore- 



li CULTURE. 

fathers, Tlior's house had five hundred and 
forty floors; and man's house has five linn- 
fired and forty Hours. Eis excellence is fa- 
cility of adaptation and of transition through 
many related points, to wide contrasts and 
extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, li is 
conceit of his village or his city. We must 

leave our pets at home, when we go into the 

street, and meet men on broad grounds of 
good meaning and good sense. No perform- 
ance is worth loss of geniality. 'T is a cruel 
price we pay for certain fancy goods called 
fine arts and philosophy. In the Norse legend, 
Allfadir did not gel a drink of Mimir's spring 
(the fountain of wisdom), until he left his 
eye in pledge. And here is a pedant that 
cannol unfold his wrinkles, nor conceal his 
wrath at interruption by the best, if their con- 
versation do not tit his impertinency, — here 
is he to afflict us with his personalities. 'Tis 
incident to scholars, that each of them fan- 
cies he is pointedly odious in his community. 
Draw him out of this limbo of irritability. 
Cleanse with healthy blood his parchment skin. 
You restore to him his eves which he left in 
pledge at Mirmir's spring. If von arc the 
victim of your doing, who cares what you do? 



CULTURE. 15 

We can spare your opera, your gazetteer, your 
chemic analysis, your history, your syllogisms. 
Your man of genius pays dear for his distinc- 
tion. Tlis head runs up into a spire, and in- 

stead of a healthy man, merry and wise, he is 
some mad dominie. Nature is reekless of the 
individual. When she has points to carry, she 
carries them. To wade in marshes and sea- 
margins is the destiny of certain birds, and 
they are so accurately made for this, that they 
are imprisoned in those places. Each animal 
out of its habitat would starve. To the phy- 
sician, eacli man, each woman, is an amplifica- 
tion of one organ. A soldier, a Locksmith, a 
bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange 
functions. And thus we are victims of adap- 
tation. 

The antidotes againsl this organic egotism 
are, the range and v;iriet\ of attractions, as 
pained by acquaintance with the world, with 
men of merit, with classes of society, with 
travel, with eminent pereons, and with the 
high resources of philosophy, art, ami religion: 

books, travel, society, solitude. 

The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse 
broken, a pointer trained, or who has visited 
a menagerie, or the exhibition of the Indus- 



16 CULTURE. 

.trious Fleas, will not deny tlie validity of edu- 
cation. "A boy," says Plato, "is the most 
vicious of all wild beasts"; and, in the same 
spirit, the old English poel Gascoigne says, 
" A boy is better unborn than untaught." 
The city breeds One kind of speech and man- 
ners; the back-country a different style; the 
sea, another; the army, a fourth. We know 
thai an army which can be confided in may 
be formed by discipline; that, by systematic 
discipline, all men may be made heroes: Mar- 
shal Lannes said to a French officer, " Know, 
Colonel, thai none bul a poltroon will boast 
thai he never was afraid." A great part of 
courage is the couraige of having done the 
thing before. And, in all human action, those 
faculties will be strong which arc used. Rob- 
ert Owen said, "Give me a tiger, and I will 
educate him." "lis inhuman to want faith in 
the power of education, since to meliorate is 
the law of nature; and men are valued pre- 
cisely as they exert onward or meliorating 
force. On the other hand, poltroonery is the 
acknowledging an 'inferiority to be incurable. 

Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal 
distemper. There are people who can never 
understand a trope, or any second or expanded 



CULTURE. 17 

sense given to your words, or any humor ; but 
remain literalists, after bearing the music, and 
poetry, and rhetoric, and wit, of seventy 01 
eighty years. They are past the help of sur- 
geon or clergy. Bui even these can nndi r- 
stand pitchforks and the cry of fire! and I 
have noticed in .some of this class a marked 
dislike of earthquakes. 

Let ns make our education brave and pre- 
ventive. Politics is an after-work, a poor 
patching. We are always a little late. The 

evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin 
the up-hil] agitation for repeal of that of which 
weoughl to have prevented the enacting. We 
shall one day learn to supersede politics by 
education. What we call our root-and-branch 
reforms of shivery, war, gambling, intemper- 
ance, is only medicating the symptoms. We 
must begin higher up, namely, in Education. 

Our arts and tools give to him who can 
handle them much the same advantage over the 
novice, as if you extended his life, ten. fifty, 
or a hundred years. Ami 1 think it the part 
of good sense to provide every line soul with 
such culture, that it shall not, at thirty or forty 
years, have to say, "This which 1 might do is 
made hopeless through my want of weapons." 



L8 CULTURE. 

But it is conceded that much of our training 
fails of effect ; I liat all success is hazardous and 
rare; that a large pari of our cost and pains 
is thrown away. Nature lakes the matter into 
ber own hands, and. though we must not omit 
any jot of our system, we can seldom be sure 
that it has availed much, or, that as muchgood 
would not have accrued from a different sys- 
tem. 

Books, as containing the finest records of 
Jiuman wit, must always enter into our notion 
of Culture. The besl heads that e\er exist- 
ed. Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, Shakspeare, 
Goethe, Milton, were well-read, universally 
educated men, and quite too wise to under- 
value' letters. Their i. pinion has weight, be- 
cause they had means of knowing the opposite 
opinion. We look that a great man should 
he a good reader, or, in proportion to the 
spontaneous power should he the assimilating 
power, Good criticism is very rare, ami al- 
ways precious. 1 am always bappy to meet 
persons who perceive the transcendent supe- 
riority of Shakspeare over all other writers. 
I like people who like Plato. Because this 
love does not consist with self-conceit. 

But books are good only as far as a boy is 



CULTURE. 10 

ready for them. He sometimes gets ready 
very slowly. You send your child to the 
schoolmaster, but 't is the school-boys who 
educate him. You send him to the Latin 
class, but much of his tuition comes, on his 
way to school, from the shop-windows. You 
like the strict rules and the long terms; and 
he finds his best leading in a by-way of his 
own, and refuses any companions but of his 

el sing, lb' hates the grammar and (!r</<h<s, 

and Loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. 
Well, the boy is right ; and von an- not lit to 
dinct his bringing up. if your theory leaves 
out his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, 
gun and fishing-rod, horse and boat, are all 
educators, liberalizers ; and so are dancing, 
dn--, and the street-talk; and -provided 
only the boy has resource--, and is of a noble 
and ingenuous strain these will not serve 
him less than the bonks. lie learns chess, 
whist, dancing, and theatricals. The father 
observes that another boy has learned algebra 
and geometry in the same time. l'»nt the fust 
boy has acquired much more than these poor 
games along with them, lie is infatuated lor 
weeks with whist and chess; but presently 
will find out, as you did, that when he rises 



20 CULTURE. 

from the game too long played, lie is vacant 
and forlorn, and despises himself. Thence- 
forward it takes place with other things, and 
has its due weighl in his experience. These 
minor skills and accomplishments, for example, 
dancing, are tickets of admission to the dress- 
circle of mankind, and the being master of 
them enables the youth to judge intelligently 
of much, on which, otherwise, he would give 
a pedantic squint. Landor said, " I have suf- 
fered more from my bad dancing, than from 
all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put 
together." Provided always the boy is teach- 
able (for we are not proposing to make a 
statue out of punk), foot-ball, cricket, archery, 
swimming, skating, climbing, fencing, riding, 
arc lessons in the art of power, which it is his 
main business to learn ; -riding, specially, of 
which Lord Herbert ofCherbury said. "A good 
rider on a good horse is as much above him- 
self anil others as the world can make him." 
Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, and horse 
constitute, among all who use them, secret 
freemasonries. They are as if they belonged 
to one club. 

There is also a negative value in these arts. 
Their chief use to the youth is, not amuse- 



CULTURE. 21 

mentj but to be known for what they are, and 
not to remain to him occasions of heartburn. 
We are full of superstitions. Each class fixes 
its eyes on the advantages it has not : the re- 
fined, on rude strength; the democrat, on 
birth and breeding. One of the benefits of a 
college education is, to show the boy its little 
avail. I knew a leading man in a leading city, 
who, having set his heart on an education at 
the university, and missed it, could never quite 
feel himself the equal of his own brothers who 
had gone thither. His easy superiority to 
multitudes of professional men could never 
quite countervail to him this imaginary defect. 
Balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards pass 
to a poor boy for something line and roman-' 
tic, which they are not ; and a free admission 
to them on an equal footing, if it were possi- 
ble, only once or twice, would be worth ten 
times its cost, by undeceiving him. 

I am not much an advocate for travelling, 
and T observe that men run away to other 
countries, because they are not good in their 
own, and run back to their own, because they 
pass for nothing in the new places. For the 
must part, only the light characters travel. 
"Who are you that have no task to keep you 



22 CULTURE. 

at home ? I have been quoted as saying cap- 
tious things about travel; but I mean to do 
justice. I think, there is a restlessness in 
our people, which argues want of character. 
All educated Americans, first or last, go to 
Europe; — perhaps, because it is their mental 
home, as the invalid habits of this country 
mighl suggest. An eminent teacher of girls 
said, "The idea of a girl's education is, what- 
ever qualifies them for going to Europe." 
Can ue never extract this tape-worm of Eu- 
rope from the brain of our countrymen? One 
sees very well whal their fate must be. II» 
that docs not lill a place at home, cannot 
abroad. He only goes there to hide his in- 
significance in a larger crowd. You do not 
think you will find anything there which you 
have not seen at homer The stuff of all 
countries is just the same. Do you suppose, 
there is any country where they do not scald 
milkpans, and swaddle the infants, and burn 
the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is 
true anywhere is true everywhere. And let 
him go where he will, he can only find so 
much beauty or worth as he carries. 

Of course, for some men, travel may be 
useful. Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors 



CULTURE. 23 

arc born. Some men are made for couriers, 
exchangers, envoys, missionaries, bearers of 
despatches, as others are for farmers and 
workingmen. And if the man is of a light 
and social turn, and Nature has aimed to 
make a Legged and winged creature, framed 
for locomotion, we must follow her hint, and 
furnish him with that breeding which gives 
currency, as sedulously as with that which 
gives worth. But, let us not be pedantic, 
but allow to travel its full effect. The hoy 
grown up ou the farm, which he has never 
left, is said in the country to have had no 
chance, and hoys and nun of that condition 
look upon work on a railroad, or drudgery 
in a city, as opportunity. Poor country boya 
of Vermont and Connecticut formerly owed 
what knowledge they had to their peddling 
trips to the Southern Slates. California and 
the Pacific Coast is now the university of tins 
class, as Virginia was in old times. "To have 
some chance" is their word. And the phrase 
"to know the world," or to travel, is synony- 
mous with all men's ideas of advantage and 
superiority. No doubt, to a man of sense, 
travel offers advantages. As many languages 
as he has, as many friends, as many arts and 



2i CULTURE. 

trades, so many limes is he a man. A foreign 
country is a point of comparison, wherefrom 
to judge bis own. One use of travel is, to 
recommend the honks and works of home; 
(we go to Europe to be Americanized;) and 
another, to find men. For, as Nature has 
put fruits apart in latitudes, a new fruit in 
every degree, so knowledge and fine moral 
quality she lodges in distant men. And thus, 
of the six or seven teachers whom each man 
want'- among his contemporaries, it often hap- 
pens that one or two of them live on the 
(it her side of the world. 

Moreover, there is in every constitution a 
(vrtain solstice, when the stars stand still in 
our inward firmament, and when there is re- 
quired some foreign fore,', some diversion or 
alterative to prevent stagnation. And, as 
a medical remedy, travel seems one of the 
best. Just as a man witnessing the admira- 
ble effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating 
on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, lock- 
jaws, rejoices in Dr. Jackson's benign discov- 
ery, so a man who looks at Paris, at Naples, 
or at London, says, "If I should be driven 
from my own home, here, at least, my thoughts 
can be consoled by the most prodigal amuse- 



CULTURE. :lo 

incut and occupation which the human race 
in ages could contrive and accumulate." 
Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the 

eesthetic value of railroads is to unite the 
advantages of town and country life, neither 
of which we can spare. A man should live 

in or near a large town, because, let his own 
genius be what it may, it will repel quite as 
much of agreeable and valuable talent as it 
draws, and, in a city, tin- total attraction of 
all the citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, 
every repulsion, and drag tin- most improbable 
hermit within its walls some day in the year. 
In town, he can find the swimming-school, 
the gymnasium, the dancing-master, the shoot- 
ing-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama; the 
chemist's shop, the museum of natural his- 
tory; the gallery of line arts; the national 
orators, in their tarn; foreign travellers, the 
libraries, and his club. In the country, he 
Can find solitude and reading, manly labor, 
cheap living, and his old shoes; moors for 
game, hills for geology, and groves for devo- 
tion. Aubrey writes, " L have heard Thomas 
llobbes say, that, in the Earl of Devon's 
house, in Derbyshire, there was a good library 
and books enough for him, and his lordship 



26 CULTURE. 

stored the library with what books lie thought 
lit to be bought. But the want of good con- 
versation was a very greal inconvenience, and, 
though he conceived lie could order his think- 
ing as well as another, yet he found a great 
detect. In the country, in long time, for 
want of good conversation, one's understand- 
ing aud invention contract a moss on them, 
Uke an old paling in an orchard." 

Cities give us collision. 'T is said, London 
and New York take the nonsense out of a 
man. A great part of our education is sym- 
pathetic and social. Boys and girls who ha\e 
been brought up with well-informed and supe- 
rior people show in their manners an ines- 
timable grace. Fuller says, that " William, 
Earl of Nassau, won a subject from the king 
of Spain, every time lie put off his bat." You 
cannot have one well-bred man, without a 
whole society of such. They keep each other 
up to any high point. Especially women; — 
it requires a great many cultivated women, — 
saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, 
accustomed to ease and refinement, to spec- 
tacles, 'pictures, sculpture, poetrv, and to ele- 
gant society, in order that you should have 
one Madame de Stael. The head of a com- 



CULTURE. 27 

mercial house or a loading lawyer or politi- 
cian is brought into daily contact with troops 
of men from all parts of the count ry, and 
those too the driving-wheels, the business 
nun of each section, and one can hardly sug- 
gest for an apprehensive man a more search- 
ing culture. Besides, we must remember the 
high social possibilities of a million of men. 
The best bribe which London offers to-day 
to the imagination is, that, in such a \ast 
variety of people ami conditions, one can 
believe there is room for persons of romantic 
character to exist, and that the poet, the 
mystic, ami the hero may hope to confront 
their counterparts. 

1 wish Cities could teach their best lesson, 
— of quiet manners. It is the foible espe- 
cially of American youth, —pretension. The 
mark of the. man of the world is absence of 
pretension, lie docs not make a speech; he 
takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is 
nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, 
performs much, speaks in monosyllables, lings 
his fact. He calls his employment b\ us 
lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues 
their sharpest weapon. His conversation 
clings to the weather and the news, yet he 



28 CULTURE. 

allows himself to be surprised into thought, 
and the unlocking of his learning and phi- 
losophy. How the imagination is piqued by 
anecdotes of some great man passing incog- 
nito, as a king in gray clothes, — of Napoleon 
affecting a plain .suit at his glittering levee; 
of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, or Welling- 
ton, or Goethe, or any container of transcen- 
dent power, passing for uobody; of Epami- 
nondas, "who never says anything, but will 
listen eternally"; of Goethe, who preferred 
trilling subjects and common expressions in 
intercourse with strangers, worse rather than 
better clothes, and to appear a little more 
capricious than he was. There arc advan- 
tages in the old hat and box-coat. I have 
heard, that, throughout this country, a certain 
respect is paid to good broadcloth ; but dress 
makes a little restraint: men will not commit 
themselves. But the box-coat is like wine; 
it unlocks the tongue, and men say what 
they think. An old poet says, — ■ 
" Go far and go sparing, 
For you '11 find it certain, 
The poorer and the baser you appear, 
The more you '11 look through still." * 

* Beaumont and Fletcher : The Tamer Tamed. 



CULTURE. 29 

Not much otherwise Mflnes writes, in the 
"Lay of the Humble," — 

" To me men are for what they are, 
They wear no masks with me." 

'T is odd that our people should have, — not 
witter on the brain, — but a little gas there. 
A shrewd foreigner said of the Americans, 
that, ''whatever they say has a little the air 
of a speech." Yet one of the traits down in 
the books as distinguishing the Anglo-Saxon 
is, a trick of self-disparagement. To be sure, 
in old, dense countries, among a million of 
good coats, a line coat comes to be no dis- 
tinction, and you find humorists. In an Eng- 
lish party, a man with no marked manners 
or features, with a face like red dough, unex- 
pectedly discloses wit, learning, a wide range 
of topics, and personal familiarity with good 
men in all parts of the world, until you think 
you have fallen upon some illustrious person- 
age. Can it be that the American forest has 
refreshed some weeds of old Pictish barbarism 
just ready to die out, — the love of the scarlet 
feather, of beads, and tinsel ? The Italians 
are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and 
embroidery ; and I remember one rainy morn- 



30 CULTURE. 

ing in the city of Palermo, the street was in 
a blaze with scarlet umbrellas. The English 
have a plain taste. The equipages of the 
grandees are plain. A gorgeous livery indi- 
cates new and awkward city wealth. Mr. 
Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of Mister 
good against any king in Europe. They have 
piqued themselves on governing the whole 
world in the poor, plain, dark Committee- 
room which the House of Commons sat in, 
before the fire. 

Whilst we want cities as the centres where 
the best things are found, cities degrade us 
by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds 
the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He 
has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, 
hills and plains, and with them, sobriety and 
elevation. He has come among a supple, 
glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile 
to public opinion. Life is dragged down to 
a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You 
say the gods ought to respect a life whose 
objects are their own; but in cities they have 
betrayed you to a cloud of insignificant an- 
noyances : — 

" Mirmidons, race feconde, 
Mirmidons, 



CULTURE. 31 

Enfin nous conrmandons ; 

Jupiter livrc le monde 

Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." * 

'T is heavy odds 

Against the gods, 

"When they will match with myrmidons. 

We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 

Our turn to-day ! we take command, 

Jove gives the glohe into the hand 

Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 

What is odious but noise, and people who 
scream and bewail? people whose vane points 
always cast, who live to dine, who send for 
the doctor, who coddle themselves, who toast 
their feet on the register, who intrigue to 
secure a padded chair, and a corner out of 
the draught. Sutler them once to begin the 
enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun 
will go down on the unfinished tale. Let 
these triflers put us out of conceit with petty 
comforts. To a man at work, the frost is but 
a color: the rain, the wind, he forgot them 
when he came in. Let us learn to live 
coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The 
least habit of dominion over the palate has 

* Berany;er. 



32- CULTURE. 

certain good effects not easily estimated. 
Neither will we be driven into a quiddling 
abstemiousness. 'T is a superstition to in- 
sist on a special diet. All is made at last 
of the same chemical atoms. 

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little 
wants. How can you mind diet, bed, dress, 
or salutes or compliments, or the figure you 
make in company, or wealth, or even the 
bringing things to pass, when you think how 
paltry are the machinery and the workers ? 
Wordsworth was praised to me, in West- 
moreland, for having afforded to his country 
neighbors an example of a modest household 
where comfort and culture were secured, with- 
out display. And a tender boy who wears 
his rusty cap and outgrown coat, that he 
may secure the coveted place in college, and 
the right in the library, is educated to some 
purpose. There is' a great deal of self-denial 
and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, 
in town and country, that has not got into 
literature, and never will, but that keeps the 
earth sweet ; that saves on superfluities, and 
spends on essentials ; that goes rusty, and 
educates the boy; that sells the horse, but 
builds the school ; works early and late, takes 



CULTURE. 33 

two looms in the factory, three looms, six 
looms, but pays off the mortgage on the 
paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully 
to work again. 

We can ill spare the commanding social 
benefits of cities ; they must be used ; yet 
cautiously, and haughtily, — and will yield 
their best values to him who best can do 
without them. Keep the town for occasions, 
but the habits should be formed to retirement. 
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to 
genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shel- 
ter where moult the wings which will bear 
it farther than suns and stars. He who 
should inspire and lead his race must be 
defended from travelling with the souls of 
other ' men, from living, breathing, reading, 
and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of 
their opinions. " In the morning, — soli- 
tude " ; said Pythagoras ; that Nature may 
speak to the imagination, as . she does never 
in company, and that her favorite may make 
acquaintance with those divine strengths which 
disclose themselves to serious and abstracted 
thought. 'T is very certain that Plato, Plo- 
tinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, 
Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but 



34 CULTURE. 

descended into it from time to time as bone- 
factors; and the wise instructor will press 
this point of securing to the young soul in 
the disposition of time and the arrangements 
of living, periods and habits of solitude. The 
high advantage of university-life is often the 
mere mechanical one, I may call it, of a sep- 
arate chamber and fire, — which parents will 
allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge, 
but do not think needful at home. We say 
solitude, to mark the character of the tone 
of thought ; but if it can be shared between 
two or more than two, it is happier, and not 
less noble. "We four," wrote Neander to 
his sacred friends, "will enjoy at Halle the 
inward blessedness of a civitas Dei, whose 
foundations are forever friendship. The more 
I know you, the more I dissatisfy and must 
dissatisfy all my wonted companions. Their 
very presence stupefies me. The common 
understanding withdraws itself from the one 
centre of all existence." 

Solitude takes off the pressure of present 
importunities, that more catholic and humane 
relations may appear. The saint and poet 
seek privacy to ends the most public and 
universal; and it is the secret of culture, to 



CULTURE. 35 

interest the man more in his public than in 
his private quality. Here is a new poem, 
which elicits a good many comments in the 
journals and in conversation. From these 
it is easy, at last, to eliminate the verdict 
which readers passed upon it ; and that is, 
in the main, unfavorable. The poet, as a 
craftsman, is only interested in the praise 
accorded to him, and not in the censure, 
though it be just. And the poor little poet 
hearkens only to that, and rejects the censure, 
as proving incapacity in the critic. But the 
poet cultivated becomes a stockholder in both 
companies, — say Mr. Curfew, — in the Cur- 
few stock, and in the humanity stock; and, 
in the last, exults as much in the demonstra- 
tion of the unsoundness of Curfew, as his in- 
terest in the former gives him pleasure in the 
currency of Curfew. For, the depreciation 
of his Curfew stock only shows the immense 
values of the humanity stock. As soon as 
he sides with his critic against himself, with 
joy, he is a cultivated man. 

We must have an intellectual quality in all 
property and in all action, or they are naught. 
I must have children, I must have events, 
I must have a social state and history, or 



36 CULTURE. 

my thinking' and speaking want body or basis. 
But to give these accessories any value, I 
must know them as contingenl and raihcr 
showy possessions, which pass for more to 
the people than to me. We see this abstrac- 
tion in scholars, as a matter of course; but 
what a charm it adds when observed in prac- 
tical men! Bonaparte, like Caesar, was intel- 
lectual, and could look at every objeel for 
itself, without affection. Though an egotist 
a I'outrance, he could criticise a play, a build- 
ing, a character, on universal grounds, and 
give a just opinion. A man known to us 
only as a eel ibritj in politics or in trade, 
gains largely in our esteem it" we discover 
th.it he has some intellectual taste or skill ; 
as when we learn of Lord Fairfax, the Long 
Parliament's general, his passion for anti- 
quarian studies; or of the French regicide 

Carnot, his sublime genius in mathematics; 

or of a living banker, his success in poetry; 
or of a partisan journalist, his devotion to 
ornithology. So. if in travelling in the dreary 
wildernesses of Arkansas or Texas, we should 
observe on the next scat a man reading Hor- 
ace, "i- Martial, or Calderon, we should wish 
to hug him. In callings thai require roughest 



CULTURE. 37 

energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and civil engi- 
neers sometimes betray a fine insight, if only 
through a certain gentleness when nil* duly; 
a good-natured admission that There are illu- 
sions, and who shall say thai he is not their 
sport r We only vary the phrase, not the 
doctrine, when we say that culture opens 
the sense of beauty. A man is a beggar who 
only lives to the useful, and, however he may 
serve as a piu or rivet in the social machine, 
cannot be said to have arrived at self-po 
sion. I suffer, every day. from the want of 
perception of beauty in people. They do not 

know the charm with which all moments and 
objects can be embellished, the charm of man- 
ner-, of self-command, of benevolence. Re- 
pose and cheerfulness are the badge of the 

gentleman. repose in energy. The Greek 
battle-pieces are calm; the heroes, in what- 
ever violent actions engaged, retain a serene 
aspeel : as we say of Niagara, that it falls 

without speed. A cheerful, intelligent face 
is the r\\(\ of culture, and success enough. 
For it indicates the purpose of nature and 
wisdom attained. 

When our higher faculties are in activity. 
we are domesticated, and awkwardness and 



38 CULTURE. 

discomfort give place to natural and agreeable 
movements. It is noticed, that the consid- 
eration of the great periods and spaces of 

astr )iny induces a dignity of mind, and an 

indifference to death. The influence of line 
scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases 
our irritations and elevates our friendships. 
Even a high dome, and the expansive interior 
of a cathedral, have a sensible effect on man- 
ners. I have heard that still' people lose 
something of their awkwardness under high 
ceilings and in spacious halls. I think, sculp- 
ture and painting have an effeel to teach us 
manners, and abolish hurry. 

But, over all, culture must reinforce from 
higher influx the empirical skills of eloquence, 
or of politics, or of trade, and the useful arts. 
There is a certain loftiness of thought and 
power to marshal and adjust particulars, which 
can only come from an insight of their whole 
Connection. The orator who has once seen 
things in their divine order will never quite 
lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as 
from a higher ground, and. though he will say 
nothing of philosophy, he will have a certain 
mastery in dealing with them, and an incapa- 
hlencss of being dazzled or frighted, which 



CULTURE. 39 

wiD distinguish his handling from that of at- 
torneys and factors. A man who stands on a 
good footing -with the heads of parties at 
Washington reads the rumors of the news- 
papers, and the guesses of provincial politi- 
cians, with a key to the right and wrong in 
cadi statement, and sees well enough where 
all this will end. Archimedes will look through 
your Connecticut machine, at a glance, and 
judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise 
man who knows not only what Plato, but what 
Saint John can show him, can easily raise the 
affair he deals with to a certain majesty. 
Plato says, Pericles owed this elevation to the 
lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke descended from 
a higher sphere when he would influence 
human affairs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, 
Washington, stood on a line humanity, before 
which the brawls of modern senates are but 
pothouse polities. 

lint there are higher secrets of culture, 
which an; not for the apprentices, hut for 
proficients. These arc lessons <>nl\ for the 
brave. We must know our friends under 
ugly masks. The calamities arc our friends. 
Pen Jonson specifics in his address to the 
Muse : — 



40 CULTURE. 

"Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, 
Almost all ways to any better course ; 
"With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee, 
And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty." 

We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play 
at heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the 
shame, the poverty, and the penal solitude, 
that belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough 
water as well as the smooth. Rough water 
can teach lessons worth knowing. When the 
state is unquiet, personal qualities are more 
than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution which 
will constrain you to live five years in one. 
Don't be so tender at making an enemy now 
and then. Be willing to go to Coventry some- 
times, and let the populace bestow on you their 
coldest contempts. The finished man of the 
world must eat of every apple once. He must 
hold his hatreds also at arm's-length, and not 
remember spite. He has neither friends nor ene- 
mies, but values men only as channels of power. 
He who aims high, must dread an easy 
home and popular manners. Heaven some- 
times hedges a rare character about with un- 
gainliness and odium, as the burr that protects 



CULTURE. 41 

the fruit. If there is any great and good thing 
in store for you, it will not come at the first 
or the second call, nor in the shape of fashion, 
ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is 
for dolls. " Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, 
" is the path of the gods." Open your Mar- 
cus Antoninus. In the opinion of the ancients, 
he was the great man who scorned to shine, 
and who contested the frowns of fortune. 
They preferred the noble vessel too late for 
the tide, contending with winds and waves, 
dismantled and unrigged, to her companion 
borne into harbor with colors flying and guns 
firing. There is none of the social goods that 
may not be purchased too dear, and mere 
amiableness must not take rank with high 
aims' and self-subsistency. 

Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who 
chides her disregard of dress, "If I cannot 
do as I have a mind, in our poor Frankfort, I 
shall not carry things far." And the youth 
must rate at its true mark the inconceivable 
levity of local opinion. The longer we live, 
the more we must endure the elementary exist- 
ence of men and women; and every brave 
heart must treat society as a child, and never 
allow it to dictate. 



42 • CULTURE. 

" All that class of the severe and restrictive 
virtues," said Burke, "are almost too costly 
for humanity." Who wishes to be severe ? 
Who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, 
in behalf of the poor, and low, and impolite ? 
and who that dares do it, can keep his temper 
sweet, his frolic spirits ? The high virtues are 
not debonair, but have their redress in being 
illustrious at last. What forests of laurel we 
bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who 
stood firm against the opinion of their contem- 
poraries ! The measure of a master is his suc- 
cess in bringing all men round to his opinion 
twenty years later. 

Let me say here, that culture cannot begin 
too early. In talking with scholars, I observe 
that they lost on ruder companions those years 
of boyhood which alone could give imaginative 
literature a religious and infinite quality in 
their esteem. 1 find, too, that the chance for 
appreciation is much increased by being the 
son of an appreciator, and that these boys who 
now grow up are caught not only years too 
late, but two or three births too late, to make 
the best scholars of. And I think it a pre- 
sentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an 
old community, a well-born proprietor is usu- 



CULTURE. 43 

ally found, after the first heats of youth, to be 
a careful husband, and to feel a habitual desire 
that the estate shall suffer no harm by his ad- 
ministration, but shall be delivered down to 
the next heir in as good condition as he re- 
ceived it ; — so, a considerate man will reckon 
himself a subject of that secular melioration by 
which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, 
and will shun every expenditure of his forces 
on pleasure or gain, which will jeopardize this 
social and secular accumulation. 

The fossil strata show us that nature began 
with rudimental forms, and rose to the more 
complex, as fast as the earth was fit for their 
dwelling-place ; and that the lower perish, as 
the higher appear. Very few of our race can 
be said to be yet finished men. We still carry 
sticking to us some remains of the preceding 
inferior quadruped organization. We call these 
millions men; but they are not yet men. 
Half engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, 
man needs all the music that can be brought 
to disengage him. If Love, red Love, with 
tears and joy ; if Want with his scourge ; if 
War with his cannonade; if Christianity with 
its charity; if Trade with its money; if Art 
with its portfolios ; if Science with her tele- 



44 CULTURE. 

graphs through the dorps of space and time ; 
can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by 
loud taps on the tough chrysalis, can break 
its walls, and lei the new creature emerge 
erect and free, -make way, and sing psean! 
The age of the quadruped is to go out, —the 
age of the brain and of the heart is to come 
in. The time will come when the evil forms 
we have known can no more be organized. 
Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all the 

material, lie is to eoiivert all impediment s into 

instruments, all enemies into power. The for- 
midable mischief will only make the more use- 
ful slave. And if one shall read the future of 
the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature 
to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding 
impulse to the Better in the human being, we 
shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will 
not overcome and convert, until at last culture 
shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. Tie will 
convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells 
into benefit. 






BEHAVIOR 



Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 
Build this golden portal; 
Graceful women, chosen men, 

Dazzle every mortal : 

Their sweet and lofty countenance 

His enchauting food ; 

He need nol go to them, their forms 

Beset his Bolitude. 

Hi' looketh seldom in their face, 

His eyes explore the ground, 

The green grass is a looking-glass 

Whereon their traits are found. 

Little he Bays to them, 

So dances Ins heart in his breast, 

Their tranquil nuen liereaveth him 

Of \\ n, of words, of rest. 

Too weak to win, too loud to shun 
The tyrants of his doOIU, 

The much-deceived Endymion 

Slips behind a tomb. 



<Z$^ 



BEHAVIOR. 



HE soul which animates Nature is 
not less significantly published in the 
figure, movement, and gesture of 
animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of 
articulate speech. This silent and subtile 
language is .Manners; not what, but koto. 
Lite expresses. A statue has no tongue, and 
needs none. Good tableaux do not need dev- 
lamation. Nature tells every secret once. 
Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, 
attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the 
face, and by the whole action of the machine. 
The visible carriage or action of the individual, 
as resulting from his organization and his will 
combined, we call manners. What are they 
but thought entering the hands and feet, con- 



48 BEHAVIOR. 

trolling the movements of the body, the speech 
and behavior ? 

There is always a best way of doing every- 
thing, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are 
the happy ways of doing things; each once 
a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated 
and hardened into usage. They form at last a 
rich varnish, with which the routine of life is 
washed, and its details adorned. If they are 
superficial, so are the dew-drops which give 
such a depth to the morning meadows. Man- 
ners are very communicable : men catch them 
from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, 
boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles 
in manners, on the stage; and, in real life, 
Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behavior. 
Genius invents line manners, which the baron 
and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the 
advantage of a palace, better the instruction. 
They stereotype the lesson they have learned 
into a mode. 

The power of manners is incessant, — an 
element as unconcealable as lire. The nobility 
cannot in any country be disguised, and no 
more in a republic or a democracy, than in a 
kingdom. No man can resist their influence. 
There are certain manners which are learned 



BEHAVIOR. 49 

in good society, of that force, that, if a person 
have them, he or she must be considered, and 
is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, 
or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and 
accomplishments, and you give him the mas- 
tery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. 
He has not the trouble of earning or owning 
tliem; they solicit him to enter and possess. 
We send girls of a timid, retreating disposition 
to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to 
the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come 
into acquaintance and nearness of leading per- 
sons of their own sex ; where they mighl learn 
address, and see it near at hand. The power 
of a woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt 
and repel, derives from their belief that she 
knows resources and behaviors nol known to 
them ; but when these have mastered her se- 
cret, they learn to confront her, and recover 
their self-possession. 

Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. 
People who would obtrude, now do not ob- 
trude. The mediocre circle learns to demand 
that which belongs to a high state of nature or 
of culture. Your manners are always under 
examination, and by committees little sus- 
pected, — a police in citizens' clothes, — but 



50 BEHAVIOR. 

are awarding or denying you very high prizes 
when you least think of it. 

We talk much of utilities, — but 't is our 
manners thai associate us. In hours of busi- 
ness, we go to him who knows, or has, or does 
this or that which we want, and we do not let 
our taste or feeling stand in the way. But 
this activity over, we return to the indolent 
state, and wish for those we can be at case 
with; those who will go where Ave go, whose 
manners do not offend us, whose social tone 
chimes with ours. "When wc reflect on their 
persuasive and cheering force; how they rec- 
ommend, prepare, and draw people together; 
how, in all clubs, manners make the members; 
how manners make the fortune of the ambi- 
tious youth; that, for the most part, his man- 
ners marry him, and, for the most part, he 
marries manners; when wc think what keys 
they are, and to what secrets; what high les- 
sons and inspiring tokens of character they 
convey; and what divination is required in us, 
for the reading of this line telegraph, we see 
what range the subject has, and what relations 
to convenience, power, and beauty. 

Their first service is very low, — when they 
are the minor morals; but 't is the beginning 



BEHAVIOR. 51 

of civility, — to make us, I mean, endurable 
to each other. We prize them for their rough- 
plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of 
the quadruped state; to get them washed, 
clothed, and set up on end; to slough their 
animal husks and habits; compel them to be 
clean ; overawe their spite and meanness, teach 
them to stifle the base, and choose the gener- 
ous expression, and make them know how 
much happier the generous behaviors are. 

Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society 
is infested with rude, cynical, restless, and 
frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and 
whom, a public opinion concentrated into good 
manners, forms aceeptcd by the sense of all, 
can reach : — the contradictors and railers at 
public and private tables, who are like terriers, 
who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to 
growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of 
the house by harking him out of sight: — I 
have seen men who neigh like a horse when 
yon contradict them, or say something which 
they do not understand : — then the overbold, 
who make their own invitation to your hearth ; 
the persevering talker, who gives yon his society 
in large, saturating doses; tin 1 pitiers of them- 
selves, — a perilous class ; the frivolous As- 



52 BEHAVIOR. 

modeus, who relics on you to find him in ropes 
of sand to twist; the monotones; in short, 
every stripe of absurdity ; — these are social 
inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or 
defend yon from, and which must be intrusted 
to the restraining force of custom, and proverbs, 
and familiar rules of behavior impressed on 
young people in their school-days. 

In the hotels mi t lie banks of the Mississippi, 
they print, or used to print, among the rules of 
the house, thai "no gentleman can be per- 
mitted to enine to the public table without his 
coat"; and in the same country, in the pews 
of the churches, little placards plead with the 
worshipper againsl the fury of expectoration. 
Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly undertook the 
reformation of our American manners in un- 
speakable particulars. I think the lesson was 
not quite lost; thai it held bad manners up, 
so that the churls could sec the deformity. 
Unhappily, the book had its own deformities. 
It oughl not io need to print in a reading-room 
a caution to strangers not to speak loud; nor 
to persons who look over line engravings, that 
they should be handled like cobwebs and 
butterflies' wings ; nor to persons who look at 
marble statues, that they shall not smite them 



BEHAVIOR. 53 

with canes. But, even in the perfect civiliza- 
tion of Boston, such cautions are not quite 
needless in the Athenaeum and City Library. 

Manners arc fact it ions, and grow oul of cir- 
cumstance as well as oul of character. If you 
look at the pictures of patricians and of peas- 
ants, of different periods and countries, yon 
will see how well they mat eh the same classes 
in our towns. The modern aristocrat not only 
is well drawn in Titian's Venetian doges, and in 
Roman coins and statues, but also in the pic- 
tures which Commodore Perry brought home 
of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands and great 
interests not only arrive to such heads as can 
manage them, but form manners of power. A 
keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank. 
or see in the manners the degree of homage 
the party is wont to receive. A prince who 
is accustomed every day to be courted and 
deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires 
a corresponding expectation, and a becoming 
mode of receiving and replying to this homage. 
There are always exceptional people and 
modes. English grandees affect to be farmers. 
Claverhouse is a fop. and. under the finish oi 
dress, and levity of behavior, hides the terror 
of his war. But Nature and Destiny are lion- 



54 BEHAVIOR. 

est, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang 
out a sign for each and for every quality. It is 
much to conquer one's face, and perhaps the 
ambitious youth thinks he lias got the whole 
secret when he has learned that disengaged 
manners are commanding. Don't be deceived 
by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes 
have strong wills. We had, in Massachu- 
setts, an old statesman, who had sat all his 
life in courts and in chairs of state, without 
overcoming an extreme irritability of face, 
voice, and bearing : when he spoke, his voice 
would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it 
wheezed, it piped, — little cared he; he knew 
that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech 
his argument and his indignation. When he 
sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort 
of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: 
but underneath all this irritability was a puis- 
sant will, linn, and advancing, and a memory 
in which lav in order and method like geologic 
strata every fact of his history, and under the 
control of his will. 

Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, 
there must be capacity for culture in the blood. 
Else all culture is vain. The obstinate preju- 
dice in favor of blood, which lies at the base of 



BEHAVIOR. 55 

the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the Old 
World, has some reason in common experience. 
Every man — mathematician, artist, soldier, or 
merchant — looks with confidence for some 
traits and talents in his own child, which he 
would not dare to presume in the child of a 
stranger. The Orientalists are very orthodox 
on this point. " Take a thorn-bush," said the 
emir Abdel-Kader, " and sprinkle it for a whole 
year with water; it will yield nothing but 
thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without 
culture, and it will always produce dates. 
Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab popu- 
lace is a bush of thorns." 

A main fact iu the history of manners is the 
wonderful expressiveness of the human body. 
If it were made of glass, or of air, and the 
thoughts were written on steel tablets within, 
it could not publish more truly its meaning 
than now. Wise men read very sharply all 
your private history in your look and gait and 
behavior. The whole economy of nature, is 
bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all 
tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with 
crystal laces which expose the whole movement. 
They carry the liquor of life flowing up and 
down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing 



56 BEHAVIOR. 

to the curious how it is with them. The face 
and eyes reveal what the spirit is doing, how 
old it is, what aims it. has. The eyes indicate 
the antiquity of the soul, or through how 
many forms it has already ascended. It al- 
mosl violates the proprieties, if we say above 
the breath here, what the confessing eyes do 
not hesitate to utter to every street passenger. 
Man cannot li\ his eve on the sun, and so 
far seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late trav- 
eller found men who could see the satellites of 
Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some re- 
spects the animals excel us. The hirds have 
a longer sight, beside the advantage by their 
wings of a higher observatory. A cow can 
bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the 
eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide it- 
self. The jockeys say of certain horses, that 
"they look over the whole ground." The 
out-door life, and hunting, and labor, give 
equal vigor to the human eye. A farmer looks 
out at yon as strong as the horse; his eve- 
beam is like the stroke of a stall'. An eye can 
threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can 
insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered 
mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the 
heart dance with joy. 



BEHAVIOR. 57 

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and 
remain gazing at a distance; in enumerating 
the names of persons or of countries, as France, 
Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink at each 
new name. There is no nicety of learning 
sought by the mind, which the eyes do not vie 
in acquiring. "An artist," said Michel An- 
gelo, " must have his measuring tools, not in 
the hand, but in the eye " ; and there is no end 
to the catalogue of its performances, whether 
in indolent vision (that of health and beauty) 
or in strained vision (that of art and labor). 

Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, 
leaping, here and there, far and near. They 
speak all languages. They wait for no intro- 
duction ; they are no Englishmen ; ask no leave 
of age, or rank; they respect neither poverty 
nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor 
virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, 
and go through and through von, in a moment 
of time. "What inundation of life and thought 
is discharged from one soul into another, 
through them ! The glance is natural magic. 
The mysterious communication established 
across a house between two entire strangers, 
moves all the springs of wonder. The conimu- 



58 BEHAVIOR. 

nication by the glance is in the greatest part 
not subject to the control of the will. It is the 
bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look 
into the eyes to know if this other form is 
another self, and the eyes Mill not lie, but make 
a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. 
The revelations are sometimes terrific. The 
confession of a low, usurping devil is there 
made, and the observer shall seem to feel the 
stirring of owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, 
where he looked for innocence and simplicity. 
'T is remarkable, too, that the spirit, that ap- 
pears at the windows of the house does at 
once invest himself in a new form of his own, 
to the mind of the beholder. 

The eyes of men converse as much as their 
tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular 
dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood 
all the world over. When the eyes say one 
thing, and the tongue another, a practised man 
relies on the language of the first, If the man 
is off his centre, the eves show it. You can 
read in the eyes of your companion, whether 
your argument hits him, though his tongue 
will not confess it. There is a look by which 
a man shows he is going to say a good thing, 
and a look when he has said it. Vain and 



BEHAVIOR. 59 

forgotten are all the fine offers and offices of 
hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. 
How many furtive inclinations avowed by ihe 
eye, though dissembled by the lips ! One 
comes away from a company, in which, it may 
easily happen, he has said nothing, and no im- 
portant remark has been addressed to him, and 
yet, if in sympathy with the society, he shall 
not have a sense of this fact, such a stream of 
life has been flowing into him, and out from 
him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be 
sure, that give no more admission into the man 
than blueberries. Others are liquid and deep, 
— wells that a man might fall into ; others are 
aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the 
police, take all too much notice, and require 
crowded Broadways, and the security of mil- 
lions, to protect individuals against them. 
The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling 
under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'T is 
the city of Lacedoemon ; 't is a stack of bayo- 
nets. There are asking eyes, asserting eves, 
prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate, — some 
of good and some of sinister omen. The al- 
leged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity 
in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must 
be a victory achieved in the will, before it can 



60 BEHAVIOR. 

be signified in the eye. 'T is very certain that 
each man carries in his eye the exact indication 
of his rank in the immense scale of men, and 
we are always learning to read it. A complete 
man should need no auxiliaries to his personal 
presence. Whoever looked on him would con- 
sent to his will, being certified that his aims 
were generous ami universal. The reason why 
men do not obey us, is because they see the 
mud at the bottom of our eye. 

If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of 
power, the oilier features have their own. A 
man finds room in the lew square inches of the 
face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the 
expression of all his history, ami his wants. The 
sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater will 
tell you how significant a feature is the nose; 
how its forms express strength or weakness 
of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of 
Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt suggest 
" the terrors of the beak." What refinement, 
and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Be- 
ware von don't laugh/ 5 said the wise mother, 
" for then you show all your faults." 

Balzae left in manuscript a chapter, which 
he called " Theorie de l<t demarche" in which 
he says : " The look, the voice, the respiration, 



BEHAVIOR. 61 

and the attitude or walk are identical. But 
as it has not been given to man, the power to 
stand guard, at once, over these four differenl 
simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch 
thai one which speaks out the truth, and you 
will know the whole man." 

Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition 
of manners, which, in the idle and expensive 
society dwelling in them, arc raised to a high 
art. The maxim of courts is, that manner is 
power. A calm and resolute bearing, a pol- 
ished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and 
the art of hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are 
essential to the courtier ; ami Saim Simon, and 
Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and an ency- 
clopaedia of Memoires, will instrucl you, if you 
wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a 
point of pride with kings, to remember faces 
and names. It is reported of one prince, that 
his head had the air of leaning downwards, in 
order not to humble the crowd. There are 
people who come in ever like a child with a 
piece of good news. It was said of the late 
Lord Holland, that he always came down to 
breakfast with the air of a man who had just 
met with some signal good-fortune. In " Notre 
Dame," the grandee took his place on the dais, 



62 BEHAVIOR. 

with the look of one who is thinking of some- 
thing else. But we must not peep and eaves- 
drop at palace-doors. 

Fine manners need the support of fine man- 
ners in others. A scholar may be a well-bred 
man, or he may not. The enthusiast is intro- 
duced to polished scholars in society, and is 
chilled and silenced by finding himself not in 
their element. They all haw somewhat which 
he has not, and, it seems, ought to have. But 
if he finds the .scholar apart from his compan- 
ions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the 
scholar has no defence, but must deal on his 
terms. Now they must tight the battle out 
on their private strengths. Wliat is the talent 
of that character so common, — the success- 
ful man of the world, — in all marts, senates, 
and drawing-rooms 1- Manners : manners of 
power; sense to see his advantage, and man- 
ners up to it. See him approach his man. He 
knows that troops behave as they are handled 
at first; — that is his cheap secret; just what 
happens to every two persons who meet on any 
affair, — one instantly perceives that he has the 
key of the situation, that his will comprehends 
the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; 
and he has ouly to use courtesy, and furnish 



BEHAVIOR. 63 

good-natured reasons to his victim to cover up 
the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. 

The theatre in which this science of manners 
has a formal importance is not with us a court, 
but dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the 
day's business, men and women meet al leisure, 
for mutual entertainment, in ornamented draw- 
ing-rooms. Of course it has every variety of 
attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, 
to youths or maidens who have great objects 
at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well- 
dressed, talkative company, where each is bent 
to amuse the other, — yet the high-born Turk 
who came hither fancied that every woman 
seemed to be suffering for a chair ; that all 
the talkers were brained and exhausted by the 
deoxygenated air: it spoiled the best persons: 
it put all on stilts. Yet here are the secret 
biographies written and read. The aspecl of 
that man is repulsive ; I do not wish to deal 
with him. The other is irritable, shy, and 
on his guard. The youth looks humble and 
manly: I choose him. Look on this woman. 
There is not beauty, nor brilliant sayings, nor 
distinguished power to serve you; but all sec 
her gladly ; her whole air and impression are 
healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and 



64 BEHAVIOR. 

the invalids. Here is Elise who caught cold 
in coming into the world, and has always 
increased it since. Here arc creep-mouse 

manners ; and thievish manners. " Look at 
Northcote," said Fuseli; "he looks like a rat 
thai has seen a cat," In the shallow com- 
pany, easily excited, easily tired, here is the 
columnar Bernard : the Alleghanies do not 
express more repose than his behavior. Here 
are the sweet following eyes of Cecile: it 
seemed always that she demanded the heart. 
Nothing can he more exeellent in kind than the 
Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and 
vet Blanche, who has no manners, has better 
manners than she; for the movements of 
Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is suf- 
ficient for the moment, and she can afford to 
express even thoughl by instant action. 

Manners have been somewhal cynically de- 
fined to he a contrivance of wise men to keep 
fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to de- 
tect those who do no! belong to her train, and 
seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very 
swift in its instincts, and. if von do not belong 
to it, resists and sneers at von. or quietly drops 
yon. The tirst weapon enrages the party at- 
tacked; the second is still more effective, but 



BEHAVIOR. 65 

is not to be resisted, as the date of the trans- 
action is not easily found. People grow up and 
grow old under this infliction, and never sus- 
pect the truth, ascribing the solitude which 
nets on them very injuriously to any cause 
but the right one. 

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. 
Necessity is the law of all who are not self- 
possessed. Those who are not self-possessed, 
obtrude, and pain us. Some men appear to 
feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. They 
fear to offend, they bend and apologize, and 
walk through life with a timid step. As we 
sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed 
company without any coat, so Godfrey acts 
ever as if he suffered from some mortifying 
circumstance. The hero should find himself 
at home, wherever lie is ; should imparl com- 
fort by his own security and good-nature to all 
beholders. The hero is suffered to be himself. 
A person of strong mind comes to perceive 
(hal for him an immunity is secured so long 
as he renders to society that service which is 
native and proper to him, — an immunity from 
all the observances, yea, and duties, which 
society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and 
file of its members. "Euripides," says Aspa- 



66 BEHAVIOR. 

sia, " has not the fine manners of Sophocles ; 
but," she adds good-humoredly, "the movers 
and masters of our souls have surely a right to 
tli row out their limbs as carelessly as they 
please, on the world that belongs to them, and 
before the creatures they have animated."* 

Maimers require time, as nothing is more 
vulgar than haste. Friendship should be sur- 
rounded with ceremonies and respects, and 
not crushed intocorners. Friendship requires 
more time than poor busy men can usually com- 
mand. Here comes to me Roland, with a deli- 
cacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping him 
like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'T is a great 
destitution to both that this should not be en- 
tertained with large leisures, but contrariwise 
should be balked by importunate affairs. 

But through this lustrous varnish, the reality 
is ever shining. T is hard to keep the what 
from breaking through this pretty painting of 
how. The core will come to the surface. Strong 
will and keen perception overpower old man- 
ners and create new; and the thought of the 
present moment has a greater value than all the 
past. In persons of character, we do not re- 
mark manners, because of their iustantaneous- 

* Laiidor : Pericles and Aspasia. 



BEHAVIOR. 67 

ness. We are surprised by the tiling done, 
out of all power to watch the way of it. Yet 
nothing is more charming than to recognize 
the great style which runs through the actions 
of such. People masquerade before us in their 
fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as 
academic or civil presidents, or senators, or 
professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the 
frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by 
these fames. At least, it is a point of prudent 
good manners to treat these reputations ten- 
derly, as if they were merited. But the sad 
realist knows these fellows at a glance, and 
they know him ; as when in Paris the chief 
of the police enters a ballroom, so many dia- 
monded pretenders shrink and make themselves 
as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a 
supplicating look as they pass. " I had re- 
ceived," said a sibyl, — "1 had received at 
birth the fatal gift of penetration": — and 
these Cassandras are always born. 

Manners impress as they indicate real power. 
A man who is sure of his point carries a broad 
and contented expression, which everybody 
reads. And you cannot rightly train one to 
an air and manner, except by making hi in the 
kind of man of whom that manner is the natu- 



68 BEHAVIOR. 

ral expression. Nature forever put a premium 
on reality. What is done for effect is seen to 
be done for effect ; what is done for love is 
felt to be done for love. A man inspires af- 
fection and honor, because he was not lying in 
wait for these. The things of a man for which 
we visit him were done in the dark and the cold. 
A little integrity is better than any career. 
So deep are the sources of this surface-action, 
that even the size of your companion seems to 
vary with his freedom of thought. Not only is 
ho larger, when at ease, and his thoughts gen- 
erous, hut everything around him becomes va- 
riable with expression. No carpenter's rule, 
no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions 
of any house or house-lot : go into the house : 
if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 
'tis of no importance how large his house, how 
beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to 
the end of all : but if the man is self-possessed, 
happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, 
indefinitely large and interesting, the roof and 
dome buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest 
roof, the commonest person in plain clothes 
sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable like 
the Egyptain colossi. 

Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, 



BEHAVIOR. 69 

nor Champollion has set down the grammar- 
rules of this dialect, older than Sanscrit ; but 
they who cannot yet nail English can read this. 
Men take each other's measure, when they meet 
for the first time, — ami every time they meet. 
How do they get this rapid knowledge, even be- 
fore they speak, of each other's power and dis- 
positions ? One would say, that the persuasion 
of their speech is not in wlmt they say, — or, 
that men do not convince by their argument, 
— but by their personality, by who they are, 
and what they said and did heretofore. .V 
man already strong is listened to, and every- 
thing he says is applauded. Another opposes 
him with sound argument, hut the argument 
is scouted, until by and by it gets into the 
mind of some weighty person; then it begins 
to tell on the community. 

Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it 
is the guaranty that the powers are not squan- 
dered in too much demonstration. In this 
country, where school education is universal, 
we have a superficial culture, and a profusion 
of reading and writing and expression. We 
parade our nobilities in poems and orations, 
instead of working them up into happiness. 
There is a whisper out of the ages to him who 



70 BEHAVIOU. 

can understand it, — " whatever is known to 
thyself alone has always very great value." 
There is some reason to believe, that, when a 
man does not write his poetry, it escapes by 
other vents through him, instead of the one 
vent of writing; clings to his form and man- 
ners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical 
about them except their verses. Jacobi said, 
that "when a man has fully expressed his 
thought, he has somewhat less possession of 
it." One would say, the rule is, What a man 
is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. 
In explaining his thought to others, he ex- 
plains it to himself: but when he opens it for 
show, it corrupts him. 

Society is the stage on which manners are 
shown ; novels arc their literature. Novels 
are the journal or record of manners ; and the 
new importance of these books derives from 
the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate 
the surface, and treat this part of life more 
worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and 
had a quite vulgar tone. The novels used to 
lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes 
of the boy and girl they described. The boy 
was to be raised from a humble to a high posi- 
tion. He was in want of a wife and a castle, 



BEHAVIOR. 71 

and the object of the story was to supply him 
with one or both. We watched sympatheti- 
cally, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, 
the point is gained, the wedding day is fixed, 
and we follow the gala procession home to the 
castle, when the doors are slammed in our face, 
and the poor reader is left outside in the cold, 
not enriched by so much as an idea or a vir- 
tuous impulse. 

But the victories of character are instant, 
and victories for all. Its greatness enlarges 
all. We are fortified by every heroic anecdote. 
The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they teach 
you the secret, that the best of life is conversa- 
tion, and the greatesl success is confidence, or 
perfect understanding between sincere people. 
'T is, a French definition of friendship, Hen que 
s'entendre, good understanding. The highest 
compact we can make with our fellow is, 
"Let there be truth between us two forever- 
more." That is the charm in all good novels, 
as it is the charm in all good histories, that 
the heroes mutually understand, from the first, 
and deal loyally, and with a profound trust in 
each other. It is sublime to feel and say of 
another, I need never meet, or speak, or write 
to him : we need not reinforce ourselves, or 



72 BEHAVIOR. 

send tokens of remembrance : I rely on him 
as on myself : if he did thus or thus, 1 know it 
was right. 

In all the superior people I have met, I no- 
tice directness, truth spoken more truly, as if 
everything of obstruction, of malformation, had 
been trained away. What have they to con- 
ceal ? What have they to exhibit ? Between 
simple and noble persons, there is always a 
quick intelligence ; they recognize at sight, and 
meet on a better ground than the talents and 
skills they may chance to possess, namely, on 
sincerity and uprightness. For it is not what 
talents or genius a man has, but how he is to 
his talents, that constitutes friendship and char- 
acter. The man that stands by himself, the 
universe stands 1a lt;ni also. It is related of 
the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated 
by the Pope, he Mas, at his death, sent in 
charge of an angel to find a lit place of suffer- 
ing in hell; but, such \\a> the eloquence and 
good-humor of the monk, that, wherever he 
went, he was received gladly, and civilly treated, 
even by the most uncivil angels; and when he 
came to discourse with them, instead of con- 
tradicting or forcing him, they took his part, 
and adopted his manners : and even good an- 



BEHAVIOR. 73 

gels came from far, to see him, and take up 
their abode with him. The angel that was 
sent to find a place of torment for him at- 
tempted to remove him to a worse pit, but 
with no better success; for such was t he con- 
tented spirit of the monk, that he found some- 
thing to praise in every place and company, 
though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of 
it. At last the escorting angel returned with 
his prisoner to them that sent him, saving, that 
no phlegethon could be found that would burn 
him ; for that, in whatever condition, Basle re- 
mained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, 
his sentence was remitted, and he was al- 
lowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as 
a saint. 

There is a stroke of magnanimity in the 
correspondence of Bonaparte with his brother 
Joseph, when the latter was king of Spain, and 
complained that he missed La Napoleon's letters 
the affectionate tone which had marked their 
childish correspondence. "I am sorry," re- 
plies Napoleon, " you think yon shall find 
your brother again only in the Klvsian Fields. 
It is natural, that at forty, he should not feel 
towards you as he did at twelve. But his 
feelings towards you have greater truth and 



74 BEHAVIOR. 

strength. His friendship has the features of 
his mind." 

How much we forgive to those who yield us 
the rare spectacle of heroic manners ! We 
will pardon them the want of books, of arts, 
and even of the gentler virtues. How tena- 
ciously we remember them ! Here is a lesson 
which I brought along with me in boyhood 
from the Latin School, and which ranks with 
the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scau- 
rus was accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, 
that he had excited the allies to take arms 
against the republic. But he, full of firm- 
ness and gravity, defended himself in this man- 
ner : "Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that 
Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, ex- 
cited the allies to arms : Marcus Scaurus, Presi- 
dent of the Senate, denies it, There is no 
witness. Which do you believe, Romans?" 
" Utri crcditis, Quirites ? " When he had said 
these words, he was absolved by the assembly 
of the people. 

I have seen manners that make a similar 
impression with personal beauty ; that give the 
like exhilaration, and refine us like that ; and, 
in memorable experiences, they are suddenly 
better than beauty, and make that superfluous 



BEHAVIOR,. 75 

and ugly. But they must be marked by fine 
perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. 
They must always show self-control : you shall 
not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king 
over your word ; and every gesture and action 
shall indicate power at rest. Then they must 
be inspired by the good heart. There is no 
beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, 
like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around 
us. 'T is good to give a stranger a meal or a 
night's lodging. 'T is better to be hospitable 
to his good meaning and thought, and give 
courage to a companion. We must be as 
courteous to a man as we are to a picture, 
which we are willing to give the advantage of 
a good light. Special precepts are not to be 
thought of: the talent of well-doing contains 
them all. Every hour will show a duty as 
paramount as that of my whim just now; 
and yet I will write it, — that there is one 
topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, 
to all rational mortals, namely, their distem- 
pers. If you have not slept, or if you have 
slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or 
leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by 
all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute 
the morning, to which all the housemates bring 



7G BEHAVIOR. 

serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption 
and groans. Come out of the azure. Love 
the day. Do not leave the sky out of your 
landscape. The oldest and the most deserving 
person should come very modestly Into any 
newly awaked company, respecting the divine 
communications, out of which all must be 
presumed to have newly come. An old man 
who added an elevating culture to a large ex- 
perience of life said to me, " When you come 
into the room, I think I will study how to 
make humanity beautiful to you." 

As respects the delicate question of culture, 
I do not think that any other than negative 
rules can be laid down. For positive rides, 
for suggestion. Nature alone inspires it. Who 
dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to per- 
fect manners ? — the golden mean is so delicate, 
difficult, — say frankly, unattainable. "What 
finest hands would not be clumsy to sketch the 
genial precepts of the young girl's demeanor? 
The chances seem infinite againsi success: and 
vet success is continually attained. There 
must not be secondariness, and '1 isathousand 
to one that her air and manner will at once 
betray that she is not primary, but that there is 
some other one or many of her class, to whom 



BEHAVIOR. 



77 



she habitually postpones herself. But Nature 
lifts her easily, and without knowing it, over 
these impossibilities, and we are continually 
surprised with graces and felicities not only 
unteachablc, but undescribable. 




BEAUTY. 



Was never form and never face 
So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
Which did not slumber like a stone 
But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
Beauty chased he everywhere, 
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
He smote the lake to feed his eye 

With the beryl beam of the broken wave, 
He flung in pebbles well to hear 

The moment's music which they gave. 
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
From nodding pole and belting zone. 
He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centred and from errant sphere. 
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
In dens of passion, and pits of woe, 
He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
To sun the dark and solve the curse, 
And beam to the bounds of the universe. 



80 BEAUTY. 

While thus to love he gave his days 

In loyal worship, scorning praise, 

How spread their lures for him, in vain, 

Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! 

He thought it happier to be dead, 

To die for Beauty, than live for bread. 



BEAUTY 



HE spiral tendency of vegetation infects 
education also. Our books approach 
very slowly the things we most wish to 
know. What a parade we make of our science, 
and how far off, and at arm's length, it is 
from its objects ! Our botany is all names, 
not powers : poets and romancers talk of herbs 
of grace and healing ; but what does the bot- 
anist know of the virtues of his weeds ? The 
geologist lays bare the strata, and can tell them 
all on his fingers ; but does he know what 
effect passes into the man who builds his house 
in them ? what effect on the race that inhabits 
a granite shelf? what on the inhabitants of 
marl and of alluvium ? 

We should go to the ornithologist with a 
new feeling, if he could teach us what the so- 



82 BEAUTY. 

cial birds say, when they sit in the autumn 
council, talking together in the trees. The 
want of sympathy makes his record a dull dic- 
tionary. His result is a dead bird. The bird 
is not in its ounces and inches, but in its rela- 
tions to nature; and tbe skin or skeleton you 
show me is no more a heron, than a heap of 
ashes or a bottle of gases into which his body 
has been reduced, is Dante or Washington. 
The naturalist is ledyjww the road by the whole 
distance of his fancied advance. The boy had 

juster views when lie gazed at the shells on the 

beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to 
call them by their names, than the man in the 
pride of his nomenclature. Astrology inter- 
ested us, for it tied man to the system. In- 
stead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star 
felt him, and he felt the star. However rash 
and however falsified by pretenders and trad- 
ers in it, the hint was true and divine, the 
soul's avowal of its large relations, and, that 
climate, century, remote natures, as well as 
near, are part of its biography. Chemistry 
takes to pieces, but it does not construct. 
Alchemy which sought to transmute one ele- 
ment into another, to prolong life, to arm with 
power, — that was in the right direction. All 



BEAUTY. 83 

our science lacks a human side. The tenant is 
more than the house. Bugs and stamens and 
spores, on which we lavish so many years, are 
not finalities; and man, when his powers un- 
fold in order, will take Nature along \\ ith him, 
and emit light into all her recesses. The hu- 
man heart concerns us more than the poring 
into ' microscopes, and is larger than can be 
measured by the pompous figures of the as- 
tronomer. 

We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men 
hold themselves cheap and vile ; and yet a man 
is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements 
pour through his system : he is the flood of 
the flood, and fire of the fire ; he feels the an- 
tipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood : 
they are the extension of his personality. 1 lis 
duties are measured by that instrument he is; 
and a righi and perfect man would be felt to 
the centre of the Copernican system. 'T is 
curious that we only believe as dec]) as we live. 
We do not think heroes can exert any more 
awful power than that surface-play which 
amuses us. A deep man believes in miracles, 
waits for them, believes in magic, believes that 
the orator will decompose his adversary; be- 
lieves that the evil eye can wither, that the 



84 BEAUTY. 

heart's blessing can heal; thai love can exalt 
talenl ; can overcome all odds. From a great 
hearl secret magnetisms flow incessantly to 
draw uiv.it events. Bui we prizevery humble 
utilities, a prudenl husband, a good Bon, a 
voter, a citizen, and deprecate any romance of 
character ; and perhaps reckon only his money 
value, - his intellect, his affection, as a sort of 
bill of exchange, easily convertible into fine 
chambers, pictures, music, and Mine 

The motive of science was the extension of 
man. on all sides, into nature, till his hands 

Should tOUCb the stars, his eves see tllTOUgh 

the earth, his ears understand the language of 
beasl andbird,and the sense of the wind ; and 
through his sympathy, heaven and earth should 
talk with him. Bui thai is nol our science. 
These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, 

seem to make wive, l.ut they leave US where 

they found us. The invention is of use to 
the inventor, of questionable help to any 

other. The formulas of science are like the 
papers in your pocket-book, of no value to 
any but the owner. Science in England, in 

America, is jealous of theory, hates the name 
of love and moral purpose. There's a revenge 
for this inhumanity. What manner of man 



BEAUTY. 85 

science make? The boy is qo1 attracted. 
Hi says, 1 do qoI wish to be suchakiud of 
man as my professor is. The collector lias 
dried all the plants in his herbal, bnl he has 
Losl weighl and humor. He has gol all snakes 
and lizards in his phials, lmt science has done 
for him also,and ha- pu1 the man intoabottle. 
Our reliance on the physician is a kind of de- 
spair of ourselves. The clergy have liroiichil is, 

which docs not seem a certificate of spiritual 
health. Bfacready thoughl it came of the fal- 
setto of their voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, 
one day riding in the forest, saw a herd of elk 
sporting. i- Sec how happy," he >aid, "these 
browsing elks are ! Why should not priests, 
lodged and fed comfortably in the temples, 
amuse themselves ? " Returning home, 
he imparted this reflection to the kiuu r . The 
king, on the next day, conferred the sovereignty 
on him, saying, " Prince, administer this empire 

for seven davs: at the termination of that 
period, 1 shall put thee to death. " At the end 

of the seventh day the king inquired, " From 
what cause has! thon become so emaciated ? " 

He answered, "From the horror of death." 

The monarch rejoined : " lave, my child, and 
be wise. Thou hasl ceased to take recreation, 



86 BEAUTY. 

saying to thyself, In seven days I shall be pul 
to death. These priests in i he temple inces- 
santly meditate on death; bow can they enter 
into healthful diversions ? " Bui the men of 
.science or the doctors or the clergj are nol \ ic- 
tims of their pursuits, more than others. The 
miller, the lawyer, and the merchant dedicate 
themselves to their own details, and do aol come 
out men of more force. Have they divination, 
grand aims, hospitality of soul, and the equal- 
ity to an\ event, which we demand in man. or 
only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, of 
the chicane ? 

No objeel feally interests as bu1 man. and 
in man only his superiorities; ami. though we 
are aware of a perfecl law in nature, it has 
fascination for us only through its relation to 
him, or, as it is rooted in the mind. At the 
birth nf Wmckelmann, more than a hundred 
years ago, side by side with this arid, depart- 
mental, post mortem science, rose an enthusiasm 

in the stud} of Beauty ; and perhaps s< ! 

sparks from it may yel lighl a conflagration in 
the other. Knowledge of men. knowledge of 
manners, the power of form, and our sensibility 
to personal influence, never go out of fashion. 
nee which we study 



BEAUTY. 87 

without book, wlio.se teachers and subjects are 
always near us. 

uveterate is our habit of criticism, that 
much of our knowledge in this direction be- 
longs to the chapter of pathology. Tiie crowd 
in the street oftener furnishes degradations 
than angels or redeemers; bui they all prove 
the transparency. Every spiril makes its 
house; and we can give a shrewd guess from 
the house to the inhabitant. Bui uol Less 
does nature furnish us with every sign of 
grace and goodness. The delicious faces of 
children, the beauty of school-girls, "the sweet 
seriousness of sixteen/' the lofty air of well- 
born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories 
in the looks and manners of youth and early 
manhood, and the varied power in all that 
well-known company that escort us through 
life, —we know how these forms thrill, para- 
lyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us. 

Beauty is the form under which the intellect 
prefers to study tin; world. All privilege is 
that of beauty; for there are many beauties; 
as, of genera] nature, of the human face and 
form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral 
beauty, or beauty of t he souL 

The ancients believed that a genius or demon 



88 BEAUTY. 

took possession at birth of cadi mortal, to 
guide him; thai these genii were sometimes 
seen as a flame of fire partly immersed in the 
bodies vi hich thej governed ; on an evil man, 
resting on his bead; in a good man, mixed 
with liis substance. They thoughl the same 
genius, at tin- death of its ward, entered a 
new-born child, ami they pretended to g 
the pilot, by tin' sailing of the ship. We rec- 
ognize obscurely tin- same lac', though we 
give it our own names. We say, that every 
man is entitled to he valued h\ his besl mo- 
ment. We measure our friends so. We know, 

they have intervals of folly, whereof we lake 
no heed, hut wait the reappearillgS of the gen- 
ius, which are sure ami beautiful. On the 
ot her side, everybody knows people who appeal 
beridden, ami who. with all degrees of ability, 
never impress us with the air of free agency. 
They know it too, ami peep with their eyes to 
see it' you detect their sad plight. We fancy, 
could we pronounce the solving word, and dis- 
enchant them, the cloud would roll up, the 
little rider would he discovered and unseated, 
ami they would regain their freedom. The 
remedy seems never to he far oil', since the 
first step into thought lifts this mountain of 



BEAUTY. s '> 

necessity. Thought is the pent air-ball which 
r.iu rive the planet, and the beauty which cer- 
tain objects have foT him is the friendly Bre 
which expands the thought, and acquaints the 
prisoner that liberty and power await him. 

The question of Beauty takes us out of 
surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of 
things. Goethe said, " The beautiful is a man- 
ifestation of secrel laws of nature, which, but 
fortius appearance, had been forever concealed 
from us/' And the working of this deep in- 
stinct makes all the c\eil emellt milch of it 

superficial and absurd enough -about works 
of art, which leads armies of vain travellers 
every year to Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Every 
man values every acquisition he makes in the 
science of beauty above his possessions. The 

nest useful man in the most useful world, so 

long as only commodity was served, would 

remain unsatisfied. But, as fasi as he sees 

beauty, life acquires a very high value. 

I 11 warned by the ill fate of many philoso- 
phers not to attempt a definition of Beauty. L 
will rather enumerate a few of its qualities. 
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; 

which has no superfluous parts; which exactly 
answers it-- end; which stands related to all 



90 BEAUTY. 

things; which is the mean of many extremes. 
It is the mosl enduring quality, and the most 
ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and 
the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage 
round his eves. Blind:— yes, because lie 
does imi see what he does nol like; hut the 
sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love, 
for finding what he seeks, and only thai ; and 
the mythologists tell us. that Vulcan was 
painted lame, and Cupid blind, to call atten- 
tion to the t'aet, thai one was all limbs, and the 
other all eyes. In the true mythology, Love 

is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as 
a guide: nor can we express a deeper mum' 
than when we say, Beaut} is the pilot of the 
young soul. 

Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms 

and colors of nature have a aew charm for us 
in our perception, that not one ornament was 
added for ornament, Inn is a sign of some bet- 
ter health or more excellent action. Elegance 
of form in bird or beast, or in the human figure, 
marks some excellence of structure ; or beauty 
is only an invitation from what belongs to us. 
I - a law- of botany, thai in plants, the same 
virtues follow the same forms. ]t is a rule of 
largesl application, true in a plant, true in a 



BEAUTY. 91 

loaf of bread, thai in the construction of any 
fabric or organism, any real increase of fitness 
to its end is an increase of beauty. 

The lesson taughl by the study of Greek and 
of ( iuihic art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite 
painting, was worth all the research, - namely, 
thai all beauty musl be organic; thai outside 
embellishment is deformity. It is the sound- 
ness of the 1) s that nltiniatcs itself in a 

peach-bloom complexion : health of constitution 

that makes the sparkle and the power of the 

eye. 'T is the adjustment of the size and of 1 
the joining of the sockets of the skeleton, thai 

gives grace of outline and the liner grace of 
movement. Thecal and the deer cannot move 
or sit inelegantly. The dancing-master can 
nevei teach a badly built man to walk well. 
The tint of the flower proceeds from its rout, 

and the ln>tres of the sea->he]l begin with its 

existence. Eence our taste in building rejects 

paint, and all shifts, and shows the original 

grain of the wood: refuses pilasters and col- 
umns thai support nothing, and allows the real 

supporters of the house QOnestlj to show thein- 

Every necessary or organic action 
pleases the beholder. A man leading a horse 
to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of 



92 BE A I TV. 

haymakers in the field, the carpenter building 
a ship, the smith at his forge, or whatever 
useful Labor, is becoming to the wise eye. Bui 
if it i> done to he seen, it is mean. How 
beautiful are ships on the sea! bui ships in 
the theatre, -or ships kept for picturesque 
effecl "M Virginia Water, by George [V., and 
men hired to stand in lining costumes at a 
penny an hour! — What a difference in effect 
between a battalion "I" troops marching to ac- 
tion, ami one of our independenl companies on 
a holiday! Iu the midst of a military show, 
and a festal procession gay with banners, I saw 
a boy seize an old tin pan that lav rusting 
under a wall, and poising it «m the top of a 
stick, he set it turning, and made it describe 
the most elegant imaginable curves, and drew 
away attention from the decorated procession 
by this startling beauty. 

Another text from the mythologists. The 
Greeks fabled that Venus was born of the 
foam of the sea. Nothing interests us which 
is stark or bounded, bui only what streams 
with life, what is in ad or endeavor to reach 
somewhat beyond. The pleasure a palace or a 
■ gives tin' eye is, that an order and 

method lias been communicated to stones, so 



BEAUTY. 93 

that they speak and geometrize, Woine tender 
or sublime with expression. Beauty is the 
moment of transition, as if the form were just 
ready to flow into other forms. Anv fixedness, 
heaping, or concentration on one feature — 
a long no^e, a sharp chin, a hump-hack — is 

the reverse of the flowing, and therefore de- 
formed. Beautiful as is the symmetry of any 

form, if the form can move, we seek a more. 
excellent symmetry. The interruption of equi- 
librium stimulates the eve to desire the resto- 
ration of symmetry, and to watch the steps 
through which it is attained. This is the 
charm of miming water, sea-waves, the flight 
of birds, and the Locomotion of animals. This 
is the theory of dancing, to recover continually 
in changes the lost equilibrium, not by abrupt 
and angular, but by gradual and curving move- 
ments. 1 have been told by persons of ex- 
perience in mailers of taste, that the fashions 

follow a law of gradation, and are never arbi- 
trary. The new mode is always only a step 
onward in the same direction as the last mode; 
and a cultivated eye is prepared for and pre- 
dicts | he new fashion. This feci Suggests | he 
reason of all mistakes and offence in our own 
modes. It is necessary in music, when you 



94 BEAUTY. 

strike a discord, to let down the oar by an in- 
termediate note or two to the accord again; 
and many a good experiment, born of good 
sense, and destined to succeed, fails only be- 
cause it is offensively sudden. 1 suppose, the 
Parisian milliner who dresses the world from 
her imperious boudoir will know how to recon- 
cile the Bloomer costume to the eye of man- 
kind, and make it triumphanl over Punch 
himself, by interposing the jusl gradations. I 
need n<>t say how wide the same law ranges, 
and how much it can be hop< d to effect. All 
that is a little harshly claimed by progressive 

parties may easily come t<» he conceded without 
question, if this rule he observed. Thus the 
circumstances may he easily imagined in which 
woman may speak, vote, argue causes, Legislate, 

and drive a coach, and all the st naturally 

in the world, if only it come by degrees. To 
this streaming or lowing belongs the beauty 
that all circular movemenl has; as, the circu- 
lation of waters, the circulation of the blood, 
the periodical motion of planets, the annual 
Wave of vegetation, the action and reaction of 
nature: ami, if we follow it out, this demand 
in our thought for an ever-onward action is 
the argument for the immortality. 



BEAUTY. 95 

One more text from the mycologists is to 
the same purpose, — Beauty rides on a lion. 
Beauty rests on necessities. The line* of 
beauty is t lie result of perfect economy. The 
cell of the bee is built at thai angle which gives 
the most strength with the least \\;i\ ; the bone 
or the quill of the bird gives the most alar 
strength, with the least weight. " It is the 
purgation of superfluities," said Michel A.ngelo. 
There is not a particle to spare in natural 
structures. There is a compelling reason in 
the uses of the plant, for every novelty of 
color or form; and our art saves material, by 
more skilful arrangement, and reaches beauty 
by taking every superfluous ounce thai can be 
spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength 
in the poetrj of columns. In rhetoric, this 
art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, 
in general, it is proof of high culture, to say 
the greatest matters in the simplest way. 

Veracity 6rs1 of all. and forever. Rien de 
beau que !<• vrai. In all design, art lies in 
making your object prominent, hut there Is a 
prior art in choosing objects that are promi- 
nent. The line arts have nothing casual, but 
spring from the instincts of the nations that 
created them. 



96 BEAUTY. 

Beauty is the quality which makes to en- 
dure. In a bouse thai I know, I have uoticed 
a block oi* spermaceti lying about closets ami 
mantel-pieces, for twenty years together, sim- 
ply because the tallow-man gave ii the form of 
a rabbit ; and, 1 suppose, it may continue to 
lie lugged about unchanged for a century. 
Lei an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on 
tin- back of a letter, ami that scrap of paper is 
rescued from«danger, is put in portfolio, is 

framed and glazed, and. in proportion to the 
beauty of the lines drawn, will be kepi for cen- 
turies. Burns writes a copy of verses, and 
sends them to a newspaper, and the human 
race take charge of them that they shall nol 
perish. 

As the (lute is heard farther than the cart, 
see how surely a beautiful form strikes the 
fancy of men, and is copied and reproduced 
without end. How many copies are there of 
the Belvedere Apollo, tin- Venus, the Psyche, 

the Warwick Vase, the Part hen, m, and tin; 
Temple of Vesta? These are objects of ten- 
derness to all. In our cities, an ugly building 
is soon removed, and is never repeated, but 
any beautiful building is copied and improved 
upon, so that all masons and carpenters work 



BEAUTY. 97 

to repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, 
whilst the ugly ones die out. 

The felicities of design in art, or in worts 
of nature, are shadows or forerunners of that 
beauty which reaches its perfection in the hu- 
man form. All men are its lovers. Wherever 
-. it creates j<>y and hilarity, and every- 
thing is permitted to it. It reaches its height 
in woman. "To Eve," say the Mahometans, 
I gave two thirds of all beauty." A 
beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her 
savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, and 
eloquence in all whom she approach 
favors of condition must go with it, since a 
certain serenity is essential, hut we 1"' 
reproofs and superiorities. Nature wishes that 
woman should attract man. yel she often cun- 
ningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, 
which seems to say, " Yes, 1 am willing to at- 
tract, hut to attract a little better kind of a 
man than any I yet behold." French//,'/ 
of the fifteenth century celebrate the name of 
Pauline de Viguiere, a virtuous and accom- 
plished maiden, who so tired the enthusiasm 
of her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, 
thai the citizens of her native city of Toul 
obtained the aid ofthecivil authorities to com- 



98 BEAUTY. 

pel her to appear publicly on the balcony at 
feasl twice a week, and, as often as she showed 
herself, the crowd was dangerous to life. No! 
less, in England, in the lasl century, was the 
fame of the Gunnings, of whom, Elizabeth oiar- 
ri id i ' 1 1 u of J lamiltou ; and Maria, the 
Earl of Coventry. Walpole says, "The con- 
course was so great, when the Duchess of 
Hamilton was presented al court, on Friday, 
thai even the u »ble crowd in the drawing-room 
clambered on chairs and tables to look at her. 
There are mobs at their doors t i mv them gel 
into their chairs, and people g i i 

3 at the theatres, wheu it is known they 
will be there." "Such crowds/' he adds, 
elsewhere, " flock to see the Duchess of Ham- 
ilton, that s -ve:i hundred people sat up all 
night, in and aboul an inn, in Yorkshire, to 
see her gel into her post-chaise aexl morning." 
Bui why need we console ourselves with the 
fames of Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pau- 
line of Toulouse, or the Duchess of Hamilton? 
\\ i all know- this magic very well, or can di- 
vine it. It does ii,i hurl weak eyes to look 
into beautiful eyes never so long. Women 
stand related to beautiful nature around as, 
and the eiiatn nvd youth mixes their form with 



BEAUTY. 99 

moon and stars, with woods and waters, and 
the pomp of summer. They heal us of awk- 
wardness by their words and looks. Wc ob- 
serve their intellectual influence on the most 
serious student. They refine and clear his 
mind: teach him to put a pleasing method 
into what is dry and difficult. VTe talk to 
them, and wish to be listened to; we fear 
to fatigue them, and acquire a facility of ex- 
pression which passes from conversation into 
habit of style. 

That Beauty is the normal state is shown 
by the perpetual effort of nature to attain it. 
Mirabeau had an ugly face od a handsome 
ground; and we see faces every day which 
have a good type, but have been marred in the 
Casting: a proof thai we are all entitled to 
beauty, should have been beautiful, if our an- 
cestors had kept the laws, -- as every lily ami 
every rose is well. But our bodies do not til 
us, hut caricature and satirize us. Thus short 
legs, which constrain us to short, mincing 
steps, are a kind of persona] insult and con- 
tumely to the owner; and long stilts, again, 

put him at perpetual disadvantage, and force 

him to stoop to the general level of mankind. 
.Martini ridicules ;i gentleman of his d,t\ whose 



100 BEAUTY. 

countenanpe resembled the i'.uv of a swimmer 
seen under water. Saadi describes a school- 
master "so ugh and crabbed, thai a sighl of 
him would derange the ecstasies of the ortho- 
dox." Faces arc rarely true to any ideal type, 
but are a record in sculpture of a thousand 
anecdotes of whim and folly. Portrait-paint- 
ers say thai mosl faces and forms are irregular 
and unsymmetrical ; have one eye blue and 
one gray; the nose uol straight; and one 
shoulder bigher than another; the hair un- 
equally distributed, etc. The man is physi- 
cally as well as metaphysically a thing of 
shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from 
good and bad ancestors, and a mislit from the 
start. 

A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was 
thought to betray by this sign some secret 
favor of the immortal gods ; and we can pardon 
pride, when a woman possesses such a figure, 
that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves 
a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to 
the artist, she confers a favor on the world. 
And \et — it is no1 beauty that inspires the 
deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the 
hook without the bait. Beauty without expres- 
sion tires. Abbe Menage said of the President 



BEAUTY. 101 

Lp Bailleul, "that lie was fit for nothing but to 
sit for his portrait." A Greek epigram intimates 
that the force of love is not shown by the 
courting of beauty, but when the like desire is 
inflamed for one who is ill-favored. And petulant 
(»l(l gentlemen, who have chanced to suffer some 
intolerable weariness from pretty people, or 
who have seen euT flowers to some profusion, 
or who see, after a world of pains have been 

successfully taken for the cosl e, how the 

least mistake in sentimenl takes all the beauty 
out of your clothes, affirm that the secret of 
ugliness consists, not in irregularity, but in 
being uninteresting. 

We love any forms, however ugly, from 
which great qualities shine, [f command, elo- 
quence, art, or invention exist in the most de- 
formed person, all the accidents thai usually 
displease, please, and raise esteem and wonder 
higher. The great orator was an emaciated, in- 
significant person, bul he was all brain. Car- 
dinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, "With 

the physiognomy of an OX, he had the perspi- 
cacity of an eagle." It was said of Hooke, 
the friend of Newton, "He is the most, anil 
promises the least, of any man in England." 
" Since I am so ugly," said Du Guesclin, "it 



102 BEAUTY. 

behooves that I bo bold." Sir Philip Sidney, 
tlic darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells lis, 
" was no pleasant man in countenance, his face 
spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, 
and long." Those who have ruled human 
destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, 
were not handsome men. If a man can raise 
a small city to be a great kingdom, can make 
bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 

oceans b\ canals, eau subdue steam, can organ- 
ize victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, 
can enlarge knowledge, 't is no matter whether 
his nose is parallel to his spine, us it ought to 
be, or whether he has a Qose at all; whether 
his ]cl:s are straight, or whether his legs are 
amputated; his deformities will come to be 
reckoned ornamental, and advantageous on 
the whole. This i^ the triumph of expression, 
degrading beauty, charming us with a power 
so line and friendly and intoxicating, that 
it makes admired persons insipid, and the 
thoughl of passing our lives with them in- 
supportable. There are faces si i fluid with < \- 
pression, so Hushed and rippled by the play of 
thought, thai we can hardly find whal the mere 
features really are. When the delicious beauty 
of lineaments loses its power, it is because a 



BEAUTY. L03 

more delicious beauty 1ms appeared ; that an 
interior and durable form has been disclosed. 
Still, Beauty rides on her lion, as before. Still, 
"it was for beauty thai the world was m 
The lives of the Italian artists, who established a 
despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings 
and nmbs of their stormy epoch, prove how 
loyal men in all times are to a liner brain, a 
finer method, than their own. It' a man can 
cut such a head on his stone gate-posl as shall 
draw and keep a crowd about it all day, b\ Us 
beauty, good-nature, and inscrutable meaning; 
if a man can build a plain cottagewith such 
Symmetry as to make all the line palaces lock 

cheap and vulgar; can take such advanti 
Nature, that all her powers serve him; mak- 
ing use of geometry, instead of expense; tap- 
ping a mountain for his water-jel ; causing the 

sun and moon to seem only the decorations of 
his (^tate ; - this is still the legitimate domin- 
ion of beauty. 

'I'he radiance of the human form, though 
sometimes astonishing, is onlj a bursl of beau- 
ty for a few years or a few months, at the pi p- 
fection of youth, and in most, rapidlj declines. 
Bui we remain lovers of it, onl\ transferring 
our interest to interior excellence. And it is 



104 BE A UTY. 

not only admirable in singular and salient tal- 
ents, but also in the world of manners. 

But the sovereign attribute remains to be 
noted. Tilings are pretty, graceful, rich, ele- 
gant, handsome, but, until they speak to the 
imagination, not yel beautiful. This is the 
reason why beauty is still escaping out of all 
analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot 
be handled. Proclus says, "It swims on the 
light of forms." It is properly not in the 
form, but in the mind. It instantly deserts 
possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. 
If I could put my hand on the north star, 
would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, 
but when we bailie in it. the beauty forsakes 
all the near water. For the imagination and 
senses cannot lie gratified at the same time. 
Wordsworth rightly speaks of "a light that 
never was on sea or land," meaning, that it 
wits supplied by the observer; and the Welsh 
bard warns his countrywomen that 

" Half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 

The new \ irtue which constitutes a thing beau- 
tiful is a certain cosmical quality, or a power 
to suggest relation to the whole world, and 
so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. 



BEAUTY. 105 

Every natural feature — sea, sky, rainbow, 
flowers, musical tone — has in it somewhat 
which is not private, but universal, speaks of 
that central benefit which is the soul of na- 
ture, and thereby is beautiful. And, in chosen 
men and women, I find somewhat in form, 
speech, and manners which is not of their 
person and family, but of a humane, catholic, 
and spiritual character, and we love them as 
the sky. They have a largeness of suggestion, 
and their face and manners carry a certain 
grandeur like time and justice. 

The feat of the imagination is in showing the 
convertibility of everything into every other 
thing. Facts which had never before left their 
stark common-sense, suddenly figure as Eleu- 
sinian mysteries. My boots and chair and 
candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors, and 
constellations. All the facts in nature arc 
nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar 
of the eternal language. Every word has a 
double, treble, or centuple u-e and meaning. 
What! lias my stove and pepper-pot a false 
bottom! I cry you mercy, good shoe-box ! I 
did not know you were a jewel-case, ('hall' 
and dust begin to sparkle, and are clothed 
about with immortality. And there is a joy in 



L06 BEAUTY. 

perceiving the representative or symbolic char- 
acter of a fact, which no hare fad Or event, 
can ever give. There arc no days in life so 
memorable as those which vibrated to some 
stroke of the imagination. 

The poets are quite righl in decking their 
mistresses with the spoils of the Landscape, 
flower-gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of 
morning, and stars of night, since all beauty 
points at identity, and whatsoever thing does 
not express to me the sea and sky, day and 
night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. 
Into every beautiful object there enters some- 

what immeasurable and di\ ine, and just as much 
into form hounded by outlines, like mountains 
on the horizon, as into tones of music, or 
dipt hs of space. Polarized lighl showed the 
Becrel architecture of bodies; and when the 
l-sight of the mind is opened, now one 
color or form or gesture, and now another, has 
a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been 
emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the 
frame of things. 

The laws of this translation we do not know, 
or why one feature or gesture enchants, why 
one word or syllable intoxicates ; but the fact 
is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a 



BEAUTY. 107 

grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants 
wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in 
his approaches, lifts away mountains of ob- 
struction, and deigns to draw a truer line, 
which the mind knows and owns. This is that 
haughty force of beauty, vis superba forma, 
which the poets praise, — under calm and pre- 
cise outline, the immeasurable and divine: 
Beauty hiding all wisdom and power in its 
calm sky. 

All high beauty has a moral clement in it, 
and 1 find the antique sculpture as ethical as 

Marcus Antoninus; and the beauty ever in 
proportion to the depth of thought. Gross 
and obscure natures, however decorated, seem 
impure shambles ; but character gives splendor 
to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray 
hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose 
hut obey, and the woman who lias shared with 
us the moral sentiment, — her locks must ap- 
pear to us sublime. Thus there is a climbing 
scale of culture, from the firsl agreeable sensa- 
tion which a sparkling gem or a scarlel stain 

affords the eve, up through fair outlines and 
details of the landscape, features of the human 
face and form, siu r ns and tokens of thought 
and character in manners, up to the ineffable 



108 BEAUTY. 

mysteries of the intellect. Wherever we be- 
gin, thither our steps tend : an ascent from 
the joy of a horse in his trappings, up to the 
perception of Newton, thai the globe on which 
we ride is only a larger apple falling from a 
larger tree; up to the perception of Plato, 
that globe and universe are rude and early ex- 
pressions of an all-dissolving Unity, — the first 
stair on the scale to the temple of the Mind. 




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